Eastwood In The West
by EmmettMcFly55
Summary: Vignette that fits between Doc and Marty realising the DeLorean is out of gas and Doc meeting Clara Clayton. Please review, ignore the immense length. I hope you all like it.


_**"Eastwood In The West"**_

**Written: **Friday, May 30, 2008 – Friday, July 4, 2008.

**Word****s: **Approximately 21.000.

**Author's Note: **I guess this story – or vignette, whatever you wanna call it – fits in between the time Marty and Doc first found out about the inability of the DeLorean to get up to 88 – and therefore trapping them there – on September 3rd, 1955, and the point they first meet Clara Clayton the next day, after having rescued her from the buckboard accident. I tried to look for some Part Three screenplays, but not finding anything, I decided to finish this on my own.

This follows up on the vignette I've written before, in which Doc buries the DeLorean on Monday evening, and thinks about life in 1885, Marty who is, as far as he's concerned, still trapped at the evening of the biggest date ever in history of Hill Valley, November 12th, 1955, standing in the rain at the Lyon Estates sign and desperately looking at the sky, wanting his best friend to return. And about Buford 'Mad Dog' Tannen, who's voted he'll shoot him just because of him shoeing his horse the wrong way. Anyway, this is the story next to that one, coming on three days… or better, two-and-a-half… after the first one ends. I hope everyone will enjoy it, as I've tried to look for details in the Part III script that a writer named Mike Mahoney has set up – as well as the other scripts, actually, and some good fan fiction stories – at his site, named 'Hill Valley Telegraph'. It's a good site, only there hasn't been a update in, what's it, almost three years? Anyway, I couldn't find any details – except for the rattlesnake incident, what really happened between Clara and Marty in one of the screenplays for Part III, but never made it to the final one since in the movie Marty never fainted when he found Doc on the third, and Clara was at that time still on her way to go to Hill Valley and end up in the buckboard accident – so I hope you will like this, all of you, as I also enjoyed writing it myself. See you in the future… or in the past, of course.

Enjoy! (And ignore the amazingly long lines in the story. I mean, don't let them spoil your fun.)

PS: About the time I've mentioned as starting the story, I figured that it had to be late in the morning because it's a long way into town (hey, it took Marty in '55 about two hours to do it! And that was two miles, and this was almost twenty) and I didn't want Marty to arrive 'early'. I could've had him arrive twenty hours after breakfast, but that probably would've been after midnight on Friday the 4th, and Marty was still more shocked by time travel in the fifties. So I think that now he walked around 1 hours, plus an hour of Seamus' carriage. Means he left around nine-thirty A.M. in my story, I suppose.

Quite a long Author's Note this time, huh? Well, I suppose that fits by a long story. I hope you enjoy! (And I hope Bttf 4444 doesn't mind I have put this story apart from the other one, instead of getting all the vignettes together. Although I don't suppose the other vignettes will be even half this length, maybe not even all together, I think it still is too long to fit together. Anyway, enjoy the story. You can read it in two times if you like... it's devided into two parts, September 3rd and September 4th. The 4th starts after 14.500 words. Just enjoy the story, and please_** REVIEW!**_

**Thursday, September 3, 1885****  
11:52 A.M. **

"Without gasoline, we can't get the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour…"

"So… what'll we do?"

Dr. Emmett Brown sighed as Marty McFly said these last words. "What'll we do…" he pondered, starting to walk around in the blacksmith shop. "What are we going to do… well, anyway, we're not going to stay here and do nothing, waiting for 1985 to catch with up the normal way just because of a lack of gasoline. We _can't_ do that, actually, since I'm going to get shot on Monday the 7th… and anyway, I highly doubt that you would be willing to stay in 1885."

Marty nodded. "I hate the Old West. We don't have electricity back here. Yours is probably the only refrigerator in the world, and it's bigger than three cars on each other. There's no toilet, and the usual meat here is horrible. I mean, at breakfast this morning Seamus and Maggie offered me toasted _rattlesnake_! How bad can you get things!"

Doc, who'd been looking to the other side for a few moments, instantly turned around as he heard Marty's words. "Seamus and Maggie?" he asked. "Seamus and Maggie McFly? Your ancestors? What were you doing with them this morning? How did you come there, anyway? I figured that you just came here right away. Looks like I was wrong…"

"Well," Marty began, staring at the older version of his friend – happy to see him this way after having spend another half week with 1955 Doc –, "let me just start to say that I didn't do it on purpose. It was all an accident that ended up bringing me into the McFly's bedroom yesterday morning."

"_Yesterday_ morning?" Doc asked, a little shocked. "Maybe you better start by the beginning. How did you arrive in 1885? And when? Did you arrive on Tuesday already? I can't imagine my younger self doing something that irresponsible… after all, I don't think the Western Union man mentioned to you exactly when the letter arrived at the office. If you'd bump into me before I wrote the letter, you could've screwed up history seriously… again."

Marty set a painful expression as he thought of the last time he'd done that, then went to answer the question. "You're right, the Western Union man didn't mention that when he delivered the letter to me. He was pretty precise, though – when I asked him if he said 'seventy years', he corrected me with saying that it was 'seventy years, two months and twelve days' to be exact. As for bumping into you – I spend the entire day yesterday at the McFly farm after I knocked into the fence while a bear was chasing me, and I didn't wake up until it was too late to leave for a trip into town – and honestly, I wasn't thinking of that by the time, anyway. I didn't arrive until 8am, though…" He stared up at Doc, confused. "Don't you remember? You tapped in my Destination Time yourself…"

Doc shook his head. "Nope" he muttered. "Don't remember a thing of it. And my memories aren't just gone, either… I remember the ones I had in the _old _timeline. I remember getting home from the clock tower, not meeting up with you…"

"One hell of a meeting," quipped Marty, "since you passed out immediately from seeing me!"

"…or sending you back to the Old West" Doc finished, ignoring the mentioning of him fainting. "It's a rather interesting thing, though. There's gotta be some reason for that. Maybe the ripple hasn't caught up with my memories yet? It may be because I'm out of my time, just like you, and therefore not remember anything. Very interesting. I wonder…"

"I wonder if I'm ever going to get a meal today" Marty said. As Doc stared at him with a look of surprise, he simply shrugged. "Hey, give me a break. I'm hungry. Then you forget manners sometimes… anyway, the last time I ate was this morning, before 8 'o clock. I know it's just twelve, but I'd really appreciate a small lunch, though." He chuckled, thinking back of what all had happened that morning. "Boy, did Maggie wake me up soon! She is really like my mom. I wonder how they look so much like each other, though… as far as I'm concerned, Mom is not related to her, or anyone in my paternal ancestry. It may be a coincidence, of course."

"Or just a thing in your heritage you never know about" Doc nodded, understanding. "I don't know that much about your relatives, since mine didn't arrive in Hill Valley since 1908, but maybe little William, Seamus and Maggie's child – he's born in April – isn't the only son they had, and maybe there was a daughter who married your great-grandpa and together had your grandfather, Sam Baines?" Seeing that Marty had stopped to be interested in that, he quickly said: "Anyway, let's eat. I've got some pancake-meal lying in the back – I made it myself – and I think that it'll be enough for a nice lunch for you. In the meantime, I'll have a look at the DeLorean. Where did you say you hid it?"

"In the cave, close to the Indian Drive-In I've arrived from" Marty said, not knowing if the Doc found just 'the cave' too hard, since he obviously didn't remember anything from '55. "But you better be careful, there… last time I was there, a bear was inside and chased me away. That's how I ended up at the McFly farm, by the way – I tripped, fell down a hill and hit my head against the fence."

"All right" Doc muttered, staring at the photograph that Marty had brought along from the 1950s again. The tombstone was still on it, bright and clear, and still noted him dying four days from now. Did that mean that they wouldn't make it back to the future, and that he still died? The inventor shook his head. No. More likely the photograph showed them what happened if the events of today – him still being in 1885 – ran their course into tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday and, eventually, Monday. And as soon as they managed to get the DeLorean up to 88 and back to the year 1985, the tombstone would likely vanish from the picture, since it was never made because Dr. Emmett Brown wasn't even in the 1880s anymore then, he'd be in 1985, where Buford Tannen could never reach him, and where he could live a life without worrying about outlaws shooting him, and in which he had Marty…

Maybe going back to the future wasn't such a bad idea after all. He'd thought it was better to stay when he buried the letter on Monday, but now… now Marty was in 1885 anyway. The safest for the continuum was getting along with the kid, back to the future, and ignoring his own benefit. The continuum was more important. He'd warned Marty for the risks when the kid had bought the sports almanac that made him end up here, and he shouldn't be an exception to those rules. Fair was fair, after all.

"Hey, Doc?" Marty asked. He came just walking back with the pancakes. "I dunno… how do you prepare these things in 1885? I'm sure there's no electricity stoves, if we ain't even got any gas stations…"

Doc shook his head, grabbed the pancake meal, mixed it up with water which he got from under his 'refrigerator', and did some of it with some butter in one of the pans in the large construction he'd build, which pretty much resembled the 'dog-food machine' the inventor had in 1985, then turned around. "Should be ready in about ten minutes – just remember to turn it around after five minutes. You can make as many you want, but make sure that you're not wasting my stove. It's expensive to heat things in this era, even more than it is in 1985… however the inflation will take something off the price, of course."

Marty looked at him, and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right, like that matters when you're going back to the future soon anyway" he muttered under his breath. "Doc, by the way, how did you manage to live here? I'd die after a week in the boring West. You've been living here for eight months already!"

Doc sighed. "Marty," he said, not knowing how to put this, "you… you and I are different. We're different people. You hate the 19th Century, you hate the thought of no electricity and can't help but only look at the negatives, but I love this era. I wanted to be a cowboy ever since I was six years old, and envied my mom for growing up in the late days of the Wild West. However you may not understand it, living in 1885 is like a youth dream come true for me."

Marty stared at Doc in disbelief, and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right" he muttered and started eating his finished pancakes. Doc stared at the homesick teenager once again and concentrated on his thoughts.

When it was about three P.M., and the clocks in Doc's blacksmith shop had just shown their real power – which not really surprised Marty because he was used to hearing it in Doc's 1985 garage – the two of them started to think about a way of getting the DeLorean. It would be hard, Marty was certain. He remembered how hard facing the bear had been before, and figured it wouldn't be much better right now.

"We can't, Doc" he tried again. "We can't just walk into that cave and drive the DeLorean out of there. The bear will kill us immediately, faster than Buford Tannen no matter if he's hundred times the fastest gun in the west. It's no use."

"Well, that's why we're setting up a plan" Doc said, confidently. "We already know that we can't just walk into the cave. So maybe we can find a way to distract the bear somehow. If we manage that, the bear may as well walk away, and we'd be able to get into the cave unnoticed. Let's see, bears like honey, so that might work. Do you know anything else, Marty?"

"No" Marty admitted. "I dunno too much about bears. You don't learn things like that with biology, and even if we did, I doubt I'd know much right now. You know how bad I am with remembering things at school."

"Biology wasn't my favourite subject on school either, to be honest" Doc admitted. "I was always more into physics. But I guess that, seeing a bear most likely doesn't move faster than fifteen miles per hour, once we're in the DeLorean, everything should be fine. There should be some gas left so we'd be able to get the time vehicle up to the workshop, and we could start trying to repair it. Hell, what am I saying? Maybe, if we could tape the hole closed, there may be enough left to get the vehicle up to 88!"

"Well you're the Doc, Doc" Marty muttered, rolling his eyes. The idea of facing the bear of yesterday morning still didn't appeal too much to him, but with Doc on his side, things may be better now. He really hoped that Doc's optimism would pay off this time.. things hadn't be going correctly in the past few days (or weeks) already, and he didn't need another great chase.

"Right" Doc said, confidently. "Now, after you eat the pancakes, why don't you try to get some rest – I've got some books on the shelves if you're bored – and I'll try to perfect my plan. We'll sure won't be able to practice it until tonight, though, so we'd be going home tomorrow morning at the very earliest."

"Perfect" Marty said, as he reached over for the pancake meal, rolling his eyes. This was certainly not good.

It certainly wasn't.

After a long rest on Doc's bed that ended up being longer than intended – Marty slept so hard that it was useless for Doc to try to wake the teen up – Marty finally got to see the plan that Doc had drawn. It was a few old bottles and cans, put together to resemble the cave, a fake bear inside it and a can with 'honey' on it. Next to it was a toy car that read 'time machine'. Marty stared at the inventor in disbelief at how he could've made this all, but Doc was already busy showing him what exactly the model stood for. Marty just watched on as he grabbed two wooden figures, resembling respectively Doc and him to a tee, and placed them on the scene. Marty now also noticed that 'figure-Marty' had a pink object under his foot, that revealed to be the hoverboard. Doc then turned to him, and started to explain his plan to the dumbfounded teenager.

"Now, Marty" he said, "as you can see, this is my plan for getting the DeLorean time vehicle out of the cave you hid it in. Over here is me, 'wooden Emmett', standing outside of the cave. As you can see, I am holding a can with honey. Now you will go up to the cave, wake the bear, and run away with the can of honey. You will set it at the point marked with the white X", as Marty looked, he saw indeed a small 'x' on the model close to the cave, "which is exactly one hundred and sixty feet away from the cave. The bear will get the honey, and eat it, and in the meanwhile, I'll go inside the cave", Marty watched as Doc moved 'wooden Emmett' inside the cave and into the toy DeLorean, "and drive the vehicle out of it. As you then have seen to it that the bear has finished the honey, you will take the can, hoverboard over to me, and we will both drive the DeLorean back to Hill Valley, or at least the farthest as we can come with it."

"Right" Marty muttered, barely able to grasp all the details but understanding the whole plan was, once again, labelled as easy, but in fact hard and dangerous. "But Doc, what if the bear will go after me instead of the honey? What if he'll reach me before I get to the X? What if the DeLorean hasn't got enough fuel, not even for the short ride away from the cave? What if…"

"Marty" Doc said firmly, "we don't have any time for 'what if's' right now. All that matters is getting the DeLorean out of the cave, which we are going to be able to do on the way I instructed it. I calculated everything over again, and we have a 90.3 percent chance of success, or so I estimate."

"90.3…" Marty groaned, letting out a sigh. "Doc, what on earth are you getting me into again…" He sighed, and sat down. "Ya know, at times like this I really wish you wouldn't have invented the time machine. Maybe you are right, and it does indeed cause nothing but disaster."

"Well, that's what I've been thinking for the past eight months" Doc said. "Anyway – let's go to the cave! We've got a mission to accomplish!" Marty smiled faintly at him, as he knew how the scientist could be sometimes – optimistic and over-enthusiastic. But one thing was sure – Doc would never, ever goad him into something he didn't think of as being possible. Marty could trust Doc, and that was one of the things that he liked about his best friend. Smiling, Marty left the shop, heading towards their new adventure.

It took some time for Marty and Doc to get ready and arrive by the shop. Doc settled his horses at around three hundred yards from the cave, and the two of them walked towards the cave. Marty was nervous about the whole thing, since the bear might as well be more aggressive than Doc suggested, and the inventor himself was just excited about another plan of his hopefully working correctly. After a few minutes of walking, they arrived outside of the cave, and saw the bear sleeping inside it, cuddled up in front of the o-so-familiar DMC DeLorean. After making sure the animal couldn't hear any of them, Doc held his hand up and looked at both of his wristwatches. "8:37 P.M." he reported. "Means that it's been about twelve minutes since sun has gone under. May as well be correct." Turning to Marty, he added: "Since it's dark now, we'll have to be careful about all this. You know the plan, don't you?"

Marty nodded. "Gotcha, Doc. Taught it myself inside-out in the past hour."

"Right" Doc smiled. "Then I think we'd better get going. I've got the honey right here, so all you have to do is wake the bear up, and make him go away thanks to the honey. You should be absolutely careful, though – bears can be rough when they wake up. How about you hold the honey in front of his nose – and once you see he's stirring, and you're certain that he'll wake up, you start running? That way, you won't have to anger him immediately – and you are even ahead of him while running. The plan should work. Just don't get any honey on yourself – that way, you'll make the bear an easy target."

"Got it" Marty sighed. "I dunno if I can go through with this, Doc. I mean – what if the bear is faster than we planned? I know you hate what if's, but it sure is a possibility. You can assure me a hundred times that things will work out just fine, but I'm still nervous about the whole thing. I don't know why, but I think that I'm just a little… well, you know…"

"Afraid?" Doc smiled. As he saw Marty's mood turn to anger, he quickly said: "There's nothing wrong with that, though. I'm afraid of things myself quite a few times. You'll just have to face the matter that makes you afraid, tell it that you won't be afraid of it anymore, and confidently go up to whatever you're facing – the bear, in this case."

"Yeah, right" Marty muttered, unsure what to make of it. He decided to do what the inventor had ordered him, though – and walked to the bear. The animal was large, more than seven feet tall, and seemed to be about to bite him any split second he went closer to it. The bear's left claw was on the ground, and the other was on the DeLorean's hood. Marty noticed that it was pretty much damaged. As for the gas tank, even from here Marty could see the pool next to the tank had enlarged trice it's size. The seventeen-year-old gulped, staring at the drained gas. This was not good.

Finally deciding to stop being a coward, Marty placed the honey in front of the bear's face, and started trying to wake the animal up. "Um… Mr. Bear?" he asked, uncertain how to begin. "I've got some honey for you… nice, delicious honey… just get away from the cave and don't hurt me, okay?" He had a feeling inside himself that when this was over, both 1955 Doc and 1985 Doc owed him quite a lot.

For a moment, it seemed like the bear was stirring a little, nice and slowly. Marty, a bit nervous stepped a little back. Then, though, the bear calmed again, and seemed to be asleep again. Having calmed his nerves, the musician stepped forward once again. "Hey, bear?" he asked, stepping again closer to the bear. Only then it happened. And at the moment it happened, Marty knew he really shouldn't have stepped forward.

There was a stone lying down at the bottom of the cave, next to the bear. Well, of course there was, there were dozens of stones, but this one particular stone was right in front of Marty's foot as he stepped forward, causing the teen to trip, lose his balance and fall right on top of the bear.

The results couldn't have been matched even if he'd destroyed Biff's alternate '85-empire by blowing up all towers of BiffCo and releasing Alternate-Doc, and then had visited his 'stepfather', and asked him how business were going. Biff would've been furious – and that was exactly what the seven-or-more-feet-tall bear-from-the-cave was now.

Within one second, the bear woke up, and with a mighty roar he slapped the case of honey out of Marty's hand. Before the stunned teenager had gotten the chance to overcome that, the bear stood up, as if showing it's immense length to the seventeen-year-old, who immediately realised that, if he ever wanted to get out of this alive, there was one thing he could do for that to happen, besides calling Doc and hoping the inventor would be on time and somehow free him from the bear's power.

And that thing was to run for it. Right _now_.

Running as fast as his legs could carry him – and that was faster than Marty had expected – the teenager left the cave, with the bear only two yards behind him, roaring evilly. While running, Marty rolled his eyes at Doc's exclamation of this being 'simple'. _If I ever get out of this alive, Doc will get a lesson he'll never forget. _

In the meantime, Doc himself had been outside the cave, waiting for Marty. When he heard the roar inside, he'd thought something was wrong, which was confirmed by a loud splash of the honey case on the floor and Marty running faster than he'd ever done out of the cave, the bear immediately following him, roaring loudly. And he also realised, that if he didn't do anything right now, his friend would soon be no more, victim of the bear that had inhibited the DeLorean's cave.

Grabbing his gun, one he called 'The Terminator' sometimes, he rapidly made his way over to the DeLorean, still standing untouched in the mine. For a second, he was fascinated by it's familiarity, but then he realised there were other things to do. Quickly, he opened the gull-wing door and entered.

As Doc sat on the familiar drivers' seat he hadn't seen for about three days and started the time circuits, he was happy to see the three readouts were working perfectly right now. He saw the Destination Time still read 'September 2 1885 08:00am' so Marty had been telling the truth when he told the scientist he'd been here since yesterday morning. Fascinating… absolutely amazing.

Telling himself that Marty was more important than that right now, he pressed the gas pedal and, after a few tries, finally got the engine to get activated. In a hurry, he drove out of the cave, up to his best friend.

Marty, in the meanwhile, was still being followed by the bear. They'd passed the place marked 'X' a long time ago and were getting close to the place the horses were. _I should've thought more carefully about this,_ he mused. _Doc may not have the intention, but he always seems to be getting me into trouble. _

As the teenager then looked behind himself, to see if the bear was still chasing him, he saw the animal indeed, angry as ever since he'd tripped over that infernal stone, but he saw something else, too, and he heard something familiar that could all in the world only be the DeLorean's motor engine. Doc was back to save him from the bear. It looked like the inventor's theories had been true indeed. The DeLorean still had some gas inside it. And Dr. Emmett Brown was taking advantage of it.

He stayed running, waiting for the time machine to catch up with him. As the car was close to him, he saw Doc sticking out his hand. He gratefully accepted it, jumped to the side seat and closed the gullwing-door behind him. "Whew!" Marty called out, exhausted. "Doc, I can understand you weren't immediately aware of my situation, but I guess ya could've showed up earlier than you did now!"

"I'm sorry, Marty" Doc said. "Now, anyway, the DeLorean is racing at ten miles per hour now – so why don't we outrun the bear, and afterwards, we go back for the horses? I mean, we can't just step out while we're driving. That would be way too dangerous to do, with that animal still being outside of the car, following us."

"Well, maybe I could use the hoverboard," Marty said, "then I -" and everything he wanted to say further was cut off as the DeLorean's engine suddenly died out and a red sign flashed – gas chamber empty. "No!" the teenager groaned, hitting the dashboard while trying to get it back on. "No! No! Get back on, you stupid engine! No!"

"Relax, Marty" Doc said, seeing the bear was getting closer to them. "I think that you may as well have a solution. Let's see, if we were going at about ten miles an hour, and I drove for just a short time, I think that the horses must be right behind that tree." The inventor pointed at a tree a few dozen yards away from them. "I've got these two lasso here. Marty, can you throw lassos?"

"Um, I never learned it, but I think I might as well try it" Marty said. "So, do you mean I can get out of the car with the hoverboard – and catch those horses? That wouldn't work. They're _behind_ that tree Doc, not in front of us. And I can't throw a rope over a tree and then also catch the horses. It's no use, Doc. I could try it a lot of times, and maybe it might work after a few, but we ain't got time for that."

"Time, time" Doc murmured, having heard the familiar word. "Well, I guess then there's another possibility." He grabbed a stone from the ground. "Marty, can you throw this stone at that tree, and try to spook the horses into the open field?"

"Check, Doc" Marty smiled, glad the inventor had find a solution. He grabbed the hoverboard, got out – only to get back in right immediately, frightened to death and grabbing his scientist friend by his collar. "Doc!" he shrieked, panicking. "The bear is only twenty yards away now! It's coming at us!"

Doc, instead, simply smiled. "Go for it Marty!" he yelled euphorically. "Throw that stone at the horses!"

Marty nodded. With a last "check, Doc" he reached out and threw the stone in the direction of the horses with a force that wasn't really what one was used from the teenager.

The result was immediate. There was a loud shriek, a snap of a rope, and both of the horses set off to run in the opposite direction, obviously afraid. Marty and Doc wasted no time. The inventor climbed out of the car, onto the hoverboard with Marty, and caught the left horse, while Marty caught the right one. In a few instants, Doc attached the rope cords to the roof of the car, and Marty threw another stone. Scared to death, the horses started pulling. Marty and Doc got inside just in time, the musician grabbing his hoverboard, as they finally started rolling again, leaving a dumb-founded bear behind.

Doc grinned, as he looked at the speedometer. "I guess our plan worked, Marty!" he cried out over the sounds of the horses pulling the time machine like if they were madmen. "We're going at seventeen miles per hour and increasing! I don't know how you managed to scare them with just stones like that, but it sure worked! I have almost never seen them run this fast before!"

Just as Doc said that, Marty had a realisation. "Hey Doc, do you think that we maybe could have the horses pull the DeLorean to 88? They do seem to run pretty fast. If we can scare them again, and make sure they're good quality, not tired and all, and if we inspire them somehow – well, I guess than we could drive real fast. Maybe it's not likely, but if there's a possibility to get up to eighty-eight, I'd love to take it, rather than be stuck here while knowing we could've had an opportunity."

"Relax, Marty" Doc said. "There's no need to fret about wasting opportunities. It's just Thursday evening, now, and tomorrow morning we're going to try out all the possibilities we can get. We'll have to make sure that there's a long stretch of road where there are no possibilities for the horses to stumble across something, and I can't make that out real well at the time of," he checked the time circuits' present time display, "eight-fifty-six P.M in the evening."

"It's almost nine, already?" Marty whistled, staring at the readouts as well, while Doc looked at the horses in front of them – for so far he could see them, since it was still pitch black outside and he wondered how Marty was so much able to catch them the minute before. "I never thought it could be so late. The day flew by." As the teenager suddenly realised something, he added: "And we still haven't had dinner, yet."

"Great Scott, you're right!" Doc called out, slapping himself for the head. "In all the exhaustion about getting the DeLorean out of the cave and the mere fact that you have come back from the year 1985, I completely forget. As soon as we get back to the blacksmith shop, I'll warm up something for you. Granted, that pack of pan cake meal was the last thing I had, but I am sure that I could buy something at Chester's Palace Saloon. It's been some time since I last ate there, but if I remember correctly, they don't close until ten-thirty on weekdays… or was it eleven… but anyway, it's one a.m. on non-weekdays. I could buy some kind of meal for the two of us there, and if he might close before we get it up, well, I guess than we better take it home, to the shop, and eat it up there."

"Yeah, right" Marty uttered, staring at the scientist. "We could do that." He wasn't really too eager to try out the food a shop that usually only served whiskey had to offer, seeing as Seamus and Maggie had given him rattlesnake as breakfast and real hard meat the evening before, but everything seemed better than no dinner at all. Turning to Doc, he asked, changing the subject: "How long is it going to take until we're at the shop again?"

Doc shrugged. "I wouldn't know" he muttered. "I haven't really got experience with getting pulled by horses. Seeing as we're going at a steady fifteen miles per hour, now, and it's twenty miles until the shop, and if we're taking into account that the horses might lower their respective speed at some point at this very trip, getting tired… I estimate that we'd be back in about one hour and a quarter. Having left from the cave at around eight-fifty-five, I suppose that we'd be entering Hill Valley around ten-fifteen P.M. Why don't I go park the DeLorean, then you can order some food as we pass the shop."

"You mean that you actually are going to let the horses pull the DeLorean all the way through Hill Valley?" Marty said, a little dumb-founded. "I dunno, Doc, that doesn't sound like something you would do. Always worried about the space-time continuum, you know. And it wouldn't do much good to that continuum to go straight through Hill Valley where everyone can see it."

"Oh, I know eighteen-eighties Hill Valley" Doc assured him. "At ten-fifteen P.M., there's no one around town, except maybe the sheriff, Marshall Strickland and his deputy, and he is out at a business appointment and won't be expected to be back until Sunday. And further there's only activity at the saloon, and we're going at another way through Hill Valley, that'll lead us to the shop as well. While you'll go to the Saloon, I'll park the DeLorean, and I'll join you a few minutes later."

"Sure thing, Doc" Marty said, rolling his eyes at everything that had happened today. He hoped Doc wouldn't mind if he slept a bit in the time machine. He'd really had a long day, and he was real exhausted now. Slumping back against the seat, he quickly headed off to Dreamland.

It took three minutes longer than Doc estimated to reach Town Square, as they pulled into Hill Valley at around 10:18 P.M. instead of the calculated 10:15. Doc led the horses to the large building saying 'Blacksmith Shop' they'd been in earlier, his living area, then headed inside to grab some 1880s money. "It's not much, since I've spend much to get the letter send, but at least it's something" he said. "Order yourself anything that you think I might like. I don't mind what, but after we've been friends for ten years, I trust you in knowing my taste."

"Check Doc" Marty said once again, heading to the saloon with some nervous feelings. He felt uncomfortable at trying the 1880s food they served in a Wild West Saloon, but guessed he had not much choice. Finally reaching the shop at around ten-twenty-three – or so Marty's watch said – he entered the saloon, a little curious to find out what to expect when it went to the dinner choices they served.

Well, the shop was, in all honest, quite surprising, as the very least. While Marty had expected a large population – there was a large population in the 1985 out-going places – there were now no more than the usual: a few old men he'd also seen that afternoon, Chester, the bartender, and his help, Joey. Also, there were two other men playing cards on the sides of the saloon. Furthermore, almost no one was in there.

Chester was the one who first saw him. "Hey, Mr. Eastwood!" he called out, cheerfully. "Well, how are you. I suppose you now learned not to mess with Mad Dog? I heard Emmett made you escape him. Do you know our blacksmith, Mr. Eastwood? He's a fine fella, but a little weird. Of course, I could say that from more people in these areas, like Mad Dog Tannen himself. He's an outlaw, and he's dangerous. You better stay away from him if you want to live, mister."

"Thanks for the advice" Marty said, faking a faint smile. "Well, anyway, I've come here to order, um, chicken… for two. Do you have that?" It was somewhat of a guess, since he had no trace of an idea what they served in Saloons in the 1880s. One thing was sure, at least, no matter how less things they served at Chester's 'Palace Saloon', he wasn't going to eat rattlesnake even if Buford came in and ordered him to do so while holding his gun against Marty's back.

Chester grinned. "Sure, Mr. Eastwood, whadda ya think what kinda business we got here? Surely we're serving some chicken for you and your blacksmith friend." He turned to Joey. "Joey! Get some chicken for Mr. Eastwood and the blacksmith." He turned back to Marty. "Where _is _your friend by the way, mister?"

"Um, he's still at the shop" Marty said. "He's looking at some machine of his. You know Do-Emmett, always working on a weird project, so he is now, too. He'll be over here, soon." He really hoped that Doc still had his reputation as an inventor here in 1885, or else the bartender might start eying him curiously.

Lucky for him, Chester burst out laughing. "Ah, Emmett" he said, smiling. "Yeah, our blacksmith sure is one weird type, isn't he? Anyway, your chicken will be ready in a few minutes… over there is a seat, the two of you can eat it there." He turned away for a few seconds after pointing the place out for Marty, then turned to the teen again. "Anyway, what did you come here in town for, Mr. Eastwood? We'd appreciate somebody from other towns visiting, so that they can go around and tell what kinda great town we got ourselves here, but ya have to be careful for Mad Dog Tannen. For someone who knew his nickname, and probably knew where he got it from too, you weren't that careful when you came in here this early afternoon, mister Eastwood… may I say Clint?"

"Go ahead" Marty said, a little distracted by what the man had said earlier. "Um… how exactly did Buford get that nickname, then? I'm sorry, but I was just for the first time in California, and someone, uh, had told me about how there was an outlaw nicknamed Mad Dog here. I didn't know any more than that this morning."

"You want me to tell the story?" Chester said. "All right – I'll tell you. But it's a sad story, it really is." His eyes began to water a little. "Ah… poor, poor Mill Valley" he said. "If only the famous twelve had fled. Then they would be still alive, and there would be no story to tell you right here, Clint…"

"Yeah, right" Marty said, a little uncertain what to make of the whole thing. What had Buford done? He wondered if Doc knew this story. After all, it didn't sound like it was going to be good. "Go ahead – tell me what happened to those guys. Knowing Mad Dog, it can't be too good…

"No, sure it ain't good" Chester said. Buford came into Mill Valley with his gang, expecting to be able to rob everyone. Then the twelve men of Mill Valley – they're the judges there – took a stand in front of him, and ordered him to get out. One of them was me brother… poor Charles. He was only forty-five… not really a young boy anymore, but still no age to die." He turned to Marty. "Anyway, they'd ordered Buford to get out, and the outlaw simply burst out laughing, and told them to look the other side for a few seconds. They did, and while one of the gang members started playing a song, Buford shot all of them in the back, laughing wildly and running over the dead bodies, telling everyone he 'just wanted to try out his guns'. That's why he's called Mad Dog." He growled. "And if you think those twelve are all the men Buford Tannen shot, well, let me tell you then that we weren't even counting Injuns or Chinamen. Buford sure did cause a lot of those to meet an early fate, he sure did. If only Marshall Strickland could just release us from the grip of outlaw Buford 'Mad Dog' Tannen… but he's out, now, and he won't be here again until Saturday, at the least. It's sure sad."

"Marshall _Strickland_?" Marty asked, a little shocked by the revelation that his vice-principal had as an ancestor an Old West Marshall. He wondered if this Marshall would be as bad as his descendant. Knowing the Strickland's, he probably would be.

Chester nodded. "Aye, Strickland. One of the best Marshalls we've ever had. Has the guts to stand up to Mad Dog… as one of the only to do so. I certainly hope he catches Buford soon. Hill Valley is supposed to be a nice place to live, but if it continues to be this way, it'll be a ghost town by 1900."

"Oh, I wouldn't think so" Marty replied with a faint smile. "Hill Valley will probably live until at least, say, two thousand fifteen. I bet it'll be able to carry on four more generations, and that it'll grow up to be… a nice place to live."

"Sure it will" Chester said, sarcastically, "if you ask me, this town ain't no future. I think-" he didn't finish his line, being distracted by someone entering the Saloon. "Hey, Emmett!" he greeted. "How nice is it to see you here. Your chicken will be ready in about one minute, so you can just sit down over there and eat it all, together with your friend, Mr. Eastwood. I talked to him just a bit… he's a nice fella, I have to say. So, how was the day, Emmett? Done any jobs?"

"Not really as much as always" Doc said, a little uneasy because he didn't want to give away anything about the future, and he hoped Marty hadn't either. "I did have a pretty hard morning working, and then Clint came around 1.15pm, and after that we just talked a lot together. So I haven't really had time to do smithing, and luckily there was nobody that required my assistance, either."

"Oh, okay" Chester said. "Well, anyway. Your chicken is ready – here you are." He handed it over to both time travellers. "Have a nice dinner, you two. It should be very tasty – at least, that's what I think." He smiled, and Doc and Marty walked off to their table.

Doc and Marty ate silently, not wanting to attract attention by talking about time travel or similar things. At eleven, they finally went off, since the place was going to close anyway, and headed towards the blacksmith shop. As Doc and Marty entered the shop, the inventor watched the many clocks in disbelief.

"Can you believe it Marty," he said, "that it's eleven-fourteen already? It's been almost ten hours since you arrived… it was such a short time for me… and still, lots of things have happened. Normally, I don't experience things like this in a week, and now it's just a day…" Thinking of something, he added: "Say Marty, how did your trip by my younger self go? You still haven't told me yet, besides that I fainted when you arrived at the clock tower…" He walked over to the DeLorean, and checked the Last Time Departed. "You departed at November 16th, Marty, at 11am. What have you been doing all that time? How did you find out about… my…death?" He gulped. "I can't believe Mad Dog is actually going to shoot me on Monday. Or at least, that's what the photograph says."

"We'll be outta here by then" Marty assured him. "As for my stay with you – well, when you passed out, I tried to revive you. I dunno how long that's been going on, but finally I gave up and carried you to the Packard. As I placed you in the passenger seat, I drove the car to your mansion. Up there, I got you out again, and tried again to wake you up."

"That must've been hard for you" Doc quipped, imagining Marty in his mansion, trying hard to wake 35-year-old Doc Brown up.

"Oh, it was" Marty said. "I didn't get you up even if I called that I was going to destroy the flux capacitor. Finally I made myself some dinner, and, certain that you weren't going to wake any time soon – it was about 11.15 by then, around this time – I went to watch a few programmes on your television, including the last part of Science Fiction Theatre." He smiled. "It was fun, actually. I can see why Dad liked it, now."

"How did it go further?" Doc pressed.

"I don't know" Marty admitted. "The only thing I remember is hearing the clock chime 12, and shortly afterwards, I must've fallen asleep. You gotta remember that I was still exhausted from everything that had happened since I woke up to discover my new family, on October 26th."

"Yeah, right" Doc said. "So, what happened afterwards? What did happen when my younger self woke up? Did he… I still insist not being able to imagine you being there?"

Marty nodded. "For a few moments, yes, but then you finally cooled down, and I showed you the letter and you were fascinated by it. The next day, Monday, we got the DeLorean out of the mine – great thinking by the way, those initials, since your younger self went crazy of it – and while wandering around there, Copernicus discovered your tombstone."

"Fascinating" Doc said, looking at the photograph that Marty had brought with him from the future. It still looked unchanged. Of course, they hadn't really done any progress with getting theirselves home, and it was still a possibility – and if he stared at the photograph, a most likely thing – that Buford would shoot him on Monday the seventh.

"We then went to the archives," Marty told him, "and tracked down some information on you. We also saw you posing by the clock in the clock tower, and were then confirmed that it was you who got shot. I insisted to get back to 1885 instead, so the entire Tuesday we spent preparing ourselves for the next morning, repairing the time circuits control microchip. Then, Wednesday, you dressed me up in that weird outfit, and you sent me back to September 2nd of 1885 at the Pohatchee-Drive-In."

"Right" Doc nodded. "Yeah, I get it now. I figure that I would've done the same in such a situation… why, of course, I did! Time travel can make things weird sometimes… since I don't remember that at all." He stared at the DeLorean. "Now, would you mind helping me with studying the papers on the time vehicle, or do you wanna go to bed directly?"

"I think I can hold out a little while" Marty nodded. "I'll be fine. Have you thought of any solutions already?"

"Not really, besides the one that you came up with" Doc admitted. "I thought a little about it, and maybe it's not as mad as it seems to be. If I could somehow… reduce the speed necessary to travel through time… and modify the Mr. Fusion so that it runs on 2.42 gigawatt instead of 1.21… it might work." He thought a little, then shook his head. "No, no… that'd take us some time in 1985 already, so in 1885, it might not be ready for testing in another seven weeks. And besides, I don't think that the horses will only be able to run forty-four."

"No other ideas, yet?" Marty asked, a little uneasy at this. If even Doc didn't know what to do, well, then they were in _really_ big trouble!

"No" Doc said, shaking his head. "Your idea is theoretically possible, but there is no practical guarantee, and I wouldn't know anything else to do…" He then snapped in his fingers. "Why yes, yes of course!" he called out. "The whole problem is that we ran out of gas, right? Well, if we get an alternative liquid to use, we'll be fine. I am sure that Chester sells some strong stuff that we might be able to use. It's not a great idea, but at least it's something, and I think it might as well work."

"Yeah, right" Marty muttered, uncertain what to make of it. "It might work. But you're not sure. It could fail, and then we're really trapped here, right? There's no other way to get home?"

"Stop being so pessimistic" Doc said, with a smile in his face. "I am sure that everything will just turn out fine. I got you home from 1955, and I got you back to 1885 from 1955… however I don't remember anything of the last experiment… so I am sure that here, having thirty more years of experience, I could as well also be able to send you… and me… back to the future. It's a pity I'll have to leave the 19th Century, but you can't have everything in life. I already enjoyed eight months of living here to the fullest, so it's no more than fair that I will, now, finally go home. It's better for the continuum that way, too, and besides, I'd really miss Einstein… and you, of course."

"I guess" Marty nodded. "Now, what do you else have in schedule? Any other things to discuss with me? Any other methods of sending us home that you want to discuss with me? Anything that concerns the whole going back to the future thing at all, or is this just what you wanted to say?"

"I don't think I have to discuss anything else about achieving the necessary speed of temporal displacement with you" Doc said with a speed that made the teenager not even grasp the half of it. "Then, besides getting ourselves home, there is also the matter of the photograph that you brought along with you, that told us about me getting shot." He frowned a little, catching something else that Marty told him earlier. "And I believe that you found another photograph, too? In the 1955 archives… did you take it with you, or did my younger self keep it in the archive? It could have serious repercussions on future events if someone would see that photograph sometime. It could cause someone to find out the truth about us, and about our real history. It might even cause a Tannen to get his hands on a time machine! Granted, I doubt that _any _Tannen, not Biff, nor Buford, Driff, Miff, Cliff or even Griff would have the brains necessary to build a time vehicle, but it is still a valid possibility, that we have to take into concern."

Marty's head almost fell off it's base. "Yeah… right" he said with some uncertainty. "Well… don't worry, Doc. You insisted that I should take the photograph with me, back to the future, for the whole risks that it contained, and I accepted it." He walked over to the DeLorean, and dug through the back of it, after a few moments finally seeming to find something. As he turned to the scientist to walk back, Doc could see he was carrying something. The photograph, no doubt. That was confirmed when Marty handed it over.

_Great Scott. It's me! _

Doc stared in disbelief at his own portrait, bringing back memories from when he saw himself on photographs that Marty brought with him, back when the teen was trapped in 1955. He looked at what appeared to be none other than himself standing there, crystal clear in the portrait, standing next to the clock in the clock tower, having a huge smile on his face as he was probably enjoying himself. The time on the clock said 8:08 PM – Doc therefore concluded that the photograph was going to be taken in about two days from now. He glanced to the clock. Yeah, two days, minus three-and-a-half-hours maybe…

He whistled, as he looked at the clock, which now said 11.37 PM. It was sure getting late, now. Tomorrow was a Friday… he'd already set the day off to get the school teacher out of the station. Hubert had told him on the first that 'she was coming in either Thursday or Friday' so Doc had been prepared for both of the possibilities. He'd figured that it wouldn't really affect the space-time continuum to get a girl from the station.

Well, he'd thought that up until the moment that Marty had re-busted into his life again that morning, and had showed him the photograph of his tombstone with mysterious miss Clara Clayton having erected it. Doc looked at it again, and saw that both his name and the erection were still intact.

Marty looked from the side, too, obviously wondering what the inventor was staring at so intensely. "Yeah Doc, you're still there," he said, although realising his friend could see that for himself. "What do you think that means, y'know? Do you still get shot by Mad Dog on Monday?"

Doc thought about it for a few seconds, then shook his head, grabbing a calculator. "I don't think so" he slowly said. "I think it's just a matter of the ripple effect being delayed. We saw some influences of the effect back when you showed me the photograph of you and your siblings in 1955, and again when we changed your future son's destiny, and erased Biff's horrifying version of Hill Valley from existence. I haven't got a clue how fast the effect works, though. We know that it took about a week and half a day to reach you. Seeing that you had come from the year 1985… no, that wouldn't work, then your photograph would've stayed intact until the ripple had reached 1985 and then erased you, your sister and your brother in one brief moment. Say, you're born in June of 1968, so that's twelve years and seven months after the moment you interfered with your father, and the ripple effect took seven days and twelve hours to catch up with you, that would mean that, per year, the ripple takes about twenty hours to reach it. That wouldn't make sense, though, since if that was correct, the ripple effect wouldn't have caught up with the newspaper that you had on you until the late afternoon of Monday, November 21st. And then for my newspaper, it would most likely have taken another five days… not the few seconds that it really took on that stormy November night in 1955." He thought of it back in nostalgia.

"The great night that caused lightning to hit you and be trapped in 1885" Marty said with a small hint of sarcasm. "No offence Doc, but I don't think that night was all that great as you think of it. It was hell on earth. Getting that stupid book away from Biff, having to get through hell to get my parents to fall in love… it sure wasn't anything like fun."

"Yeah, okay" Doc nodded. "Anyway… I think you better go to bed, now. In the meantime, it's about 11:41, and I don't think that at your home that's bedtime, no matter whatever you tell me. We have to get up early tomorrow."

"Like my Mom cares" Marty said. "She usually drinks a wine and doesn't care if I'm awake or sleeping." Remembering something as he looked at Doc's frown, he added: "But that is changed now… right? I did change things for the better in 1955? I have a freaking truck? My mom really approves of Jennifer?" He chuckled a little. "I sure messed things up by pushing my Dad out of the way of Grandpa Sam's car…"

"You certainly did" Doc nodded. "Although it's turned out for the better, that's another reason why we should get ourselves back to the future as soon as possible, and then destroy the time machine. It really does cause nothing but disaster, and it causes hell to be possible on earth… like Biff's empire." He paused. "But first, we better make our preparations for you to go to bed, now. If you aren't awake tomorrow when we go and try to get the DeLorean home, you might accidentally spill something about the future to the locals."

"Yeah right" Marty nodded. "I guess I better go to sleep now, then? Where do I have to sleep, anyway?" His eyes darted through the blacksmith shop. Aside from Doc's bed, there wasn't really an ability to sleep. And he _really _wasn't looking forward to just sleeping on the ground…

"How about you use my bed?" Doc suggested. "I have another bed in the back – I could use that. I know how disorientate you are when in a new place, from back in 1955, and now it should be even harder adjusting. Now if you don't feel too bothered by me being in the same room as you, thinking about how to get the DeLorean to 88, you should be able to sleep quite comfortably."

"Na, Doc" Marty said. "I'll sleep on the bed from the back – you can have your own. I shouldn't even be here in the first place, according to you – so I can't really take your bed. I'll sleep in it just fine." Marty grinned. "Anyway, see you tomorrow then, Doc." He walked over to the bed, then turned around one more time to stare at Doc, who smiled brightly. "Are you sure that everything will turn out all right?"

"We'll be fine" Doc assured him. "We certainly will be." He grinned. "No, really. Just go to sleep – I am almost certain that tomorrow we can come up with a good plan for sending the two of us back… back to the future!" He chuckled. "No, really. Everything will be fine, and we'll arrive safe and sound on October 27th 1985, as we're supposed to."

Marty frowned. "October _twenty-seventh_?" he asked, sceptically. "No offence, Doc… but isn't that late? If I remember correct, you told me back when we went to '55, that the reality was gonna be erased around Jennifer and Einie. Now why can't we return to the twenty-sixth, then? Y'know, come back before we left? Maybe we can go to sometime in the late afternoon or something…"

"Marty…" Doc said, sighing, then grinned. "Well, you _are_ thinking fourth-dimensionally once! And back in 1955 I might as well have suggested that, yes. But now… well, I've spend eight months thinking, and I came to realise that this was just a theory. So we better return to October 27th anyway. If we go in the early morning, we might be able to avoid people noticing you missing. On the other hand, though…"

"Yeah, right Doc, I gotta go" Marty said. He liked to have Doc as his friend, but he didn't exactly like it when the inventor would talk scientific again. The teenager wasn't all that good in science and physics, anyway, and the way Doc talked about it, only persons with an IQ of over 130 would understand. "See you tomorrow."

Doc frowned slightly at Marty's quickness to leave, then decided 'what the hell'. "See you tomorrow too, Marty."

After just avoiding having another conversation about the future and time travel problems, Marty finally headed to bed. It was around 12:05 by then, and he really felt tired. He figured walking all the way to Hill Valley back when he was just awake really did something to him. Doc tried to tell him that it was normal, but Marty didn't care. He should be able to keep up longer, he always did at home. According to him, a long walking trip was no good excuse for being so tired.

Doc, however, said he was talking nonsense. He was tired, and that was normal. He should just go to sleep, and the inventor himself would handle the work around the time machine. _"Stubborn as always" _Marty thought as he lied down on the bed. He didn't have a pyjama around, but he didn't care – he was used to just sleep in his clothes. His mother always scolded on him for it – or at least, his old mom did – but he didn't care.

His old mom… that was true, history had changed. Having distracted by other things, Marty now finally realised it again. History had changed. His father was an author. His mother was no longer an alcoholic, his brother had a well-paying job at some sort of office instead of being stuck at working at Burger King, and his sister was actually _attractive_… or at least, that was what some of Hill Valley's boys thought about her, according to what he'd heard of the conversation his siblings had before he entered the room on that morning of Saturday, October 26th 1985… now a good hundred years and some weeks into the future.

The future. He was trapped, once again, this time a hundred years into the past. Granted, this time they had fuel enough and there was no lightning-stunt necessary, but something as simple as a lack of gas was apparently enough to create problems, too.

"Great" Marty muttered under his breath. He was in the 1880s. A hundred years before his own time. At least now he had a Doc who he knew and trusted completely – not that he didn't trust the 1955 Doc, but he couldn't relate to the guy all that much – and also knew more about time travel than his fifties-counterpart. Marty smiled, as he remembered the last time he'd seen '55 Doc, and wondered why this Doc couldn't remember the whole event, including sending his future friend back in time. '85 Doc (was that _18_85 Doc or _19_85 Doc) seemed not to remember anything at all, instead having no other memory than going home by himself and spending the next few days cleaning up his lab, throwing away all the stuff Marty had left behind, reading the letter Marty had written him about the terrorists on that fateful evening, and musing about his future… and none of that included sending Future Boy through time once again.

Marty sighed, not caring for that right now. What _did _matter, was going to sleep. According to Doc, they had a long day in front of them, and after a few weeks of time travelling, Marty knew that was most likely the truth. There was another period of stressing tries to get home going to be tomorrow, and even if they made it home at the first try, Marty figured that it was still better to sleep some while, knowing that he wouldn't get time for that during the daytime of September 4th.

The seventeen-year-old moved a little, staring at Doc who was working a few yards away from him. The inventor was leaning over his table, studying some of their plans to get home no doubt, and didn't make any noises except for a quick scrabble of a note by a pencil a few times. The teenager smiled… this was typical for his friend. When Doc was busy in his experiments, he didn't care for anything else. Sometimes, he was so busy with it that he didn't stop and finally fell asleep at his work-table… Marty remembered catching him doing just that a few times. The last time that happened was already a few months behind him, though.

Thinking about Doc, the teen started to see his friend in a whole new light. Doc had actually managed to keep hidden plans about a time machine. A working one, no less. They'd been friends for ten years, and all the time Doc had secretly worked on plans for a machine able to do what mankind could only fantasize about. He'd bought a DeLorean, which he somehow also had managed to keep hidden for his best friend, and had implanted all the circuitry without Marty knowing about it, or even thinking something was up during all those years. _"When did he do that," _ Marty thought, kind of jokingly, _"at night? Then again… knowing Doc, he'd do just that." _

Marty sighed, trying hard to ignore all these thoughts and go to sleep. But it didn't work. A new thoughtstream entered… about his ancestors from right now, Seamus and Maggie McFly. Marty had heard about them, they were the ones that started the family in the late 19th Century after having moved from Ireland, but furthermore, he hadn't known a bit about them. Now, however, he'd interacted with them, seen them alive… it was more than any normal living person could grasp. That was, a normal person who didn't have a time machine at his hands.

Marty had to smile for a second, as he realised how lucky he was. No one he knew did actually have the chance to travel through time, to find out everything about his future and past. He'd changed his history. Without Emmett Brown's time machine he would be in 1985 all right, but he would still have an alcoholic as a mother and an unconfident wimp as a father. Martin McFly owed Doc a lot for inventing the time machine, more than he'd ever would agree to. Doc's time machine had changed his life… for the better.

_But it didn't change _Doc's _life. Doc got shot by Libyans, and then by Mad Dog Tannen. Holy shit, why hasn't that photograph changed yet! _It had been about eleven hours since he'd first bumped into the local blacksmithing version of his friend, Doctor Emmett Brown, and still the photograph stubbornly insisted that Doc would die on Monday morning. Maybe it was because it was _Doc's_ tombstone, Marty mused. The Doc was quite stubborn himself. The teenager chuckled at the thought of a tombstone not wanting to give in to the ripple effect. That actually sounded quite funny.

Sighing, Marty rolled himself around again. Now why couldn't he sleep. Why couldn't he just give in. He stared at one of the clocks Doc had – it was 12:15. Normally, he could sleep by now… more than easy, even if he didn't want to do so. The teen grimaced, thinking of the other time he'd been asleep around 12:15 recently… the night of Friday on Saturday in late October '85. He'd been sound asleep too, then.

But then that fateful phone call had come, he'd headed to the mall, and no more than an hour and a half later, he was trapped in the fifties, Doc was dead, and the time machine out of commission. _"I would've given anything for a good night's rest then," _Marty thought, _"and now I got the chance, but I ain't sleeping! It's quite sarcastic, isn't it?" _He chuckled softly, then turned around once again.

Marty sighed, staring up to the roof. The blacksmith stable was made from holt, and it was quite a nice home, compared to others in this era. Marty wondered how many of the things in here Doc had made by himself. After all, the inventor had been here for eight months now (and a few days). It really sounded weird how Doc had actually been able to stay in the 1880s for such a long time.

The seventeen-year-old sighed, as he thought of the era he was currently in. Not only did he dislike the food in here, he also hated the lack of electricity, rock music – or music of _any _normal kind – and many, many other things. This era seemed so boring to him, compared to 1985.

"_Well, if I lived here, I figured I wouldn't have time to realise how boring this era is" _Marty thought, not realising how less sense it all made. The 1880s were hard to live in – simple things like heating up a dinner took hours in this era… he'd experienced it with the pancakes on Doc's stove, which was most likely one of the few quick methods of heating dinner he knew in here. And still, it took long.

Marty started to wonder what his friend was up to, now. Doc was most likely busy with the DeLorean, trying to think of something else to get it up to 88, instead of the horse-idea. Knowing the inventor, he'd try out all kinds of weird things, and finally decide that it wasn't really a good idea, after all. The teen recalled how Doc had been in 1955, trying hard to get Marty back to the future. He'd had his eyes bugging out of his head when he tried to inspect Doc's notes one evening, with in it the details about getting him back home. It was a completely drawn-out diagram, and Marty had wondered how Doc himself could keep track of all of it. But, then again, the Doc was the Doc.

"_Maybe I should think of our time travel adventures" _Marty thought. But, soon he realised that didn't help anything either. The trips they'd made to the future, Biff's hellish reality and the burning of the book back in '55 weren't exactly fun trips… well, taking in exception the fun he had while listening to his younger self play Johnny B. Goode on stage and converse with Marty's teenage parents.

The seventeen-year-old still wondered how shy, nerdy George McFly had actually managed to punch Biff out. He knew from himself how hard he'd been trying to convince his Dad to take a stand to other people, especially Biff, back in the 1980s. How could the thing that hadn't been able to work in years work in just a week, or more to the point, five days – he'd barely interacted with the guy on Saturday and Sunday – and work so well?

It could barely be George being 17 again. Of course a teenager was something else than an adult, but teenage George had been so recognisable back when Biff had bullied him around on November 5th. Wimpy, giving into Tannen's jokes, and then finally accepting another load of work Biff ordered him to do. It made Marty sick in 1985, it did the same in 1955, and even here in 1885, Marty felt bad for young George. At least that got changed on that fateful night… which brought him right back to the question: how did nerdy George manage to punch out Biff Tannen?

Instead of remembering it from his first time around, when Biff was already falling to the ground when he showed up, Marty now tried to remember this particular event from his second set of memories. He recalled showing up there, still under stress from not being able to find the almanac, then watching the event while he knew the outcome… and then there was a point the first Marty, 1955 Marty, hadn't managed to notice and in fact neither had '85 Marty. But now he recalled. Biff had laughed at Lorraine. _Laughed. _Biff was having fun with doing this, so mercifully. And Marty remembered seeing George staring at it in a look of complete disbelief, getting angry…no, that was supposed to be 'furious', not just 'angry', and then punch Tannen out.

Marty smiled as he thought of it. George McFly had been dumb-founded, or if that was an overestimation at the very least quite surprised when he'd lied Biff out. Just to imagine that this was all the result of a little encouragement caused by Biff almost raping Lorraine. Marty wondered if something like that would happen to his future son, as well.

His future son. Thinking about him made Marty feel like vomiting. The kid had been so much of a wimp when they'd visited twenty-fifteen… so shy, so unable to stand up against Tannen's gang, with the weirdest kind of voice difference to his father's that Marty had ever heard. The teen still couldn't believe that his son, his very own child could be so much like him yet so different from him.

And then, there was the matter of himself to consider… his future self. Marty recalled what old, grumpy Biff Tannen had called him – a loser. A loser with a capital L, the guy who took his life and flushed it right down the toilet. And, well, the personality his son had made him not doubt that. Something had to have happened to him in the future. Something bad. But then again, Doc said his future was turning out fine! And he lived in Hilldale – _Hilldale_, for crying out it loud! Everyone on school said it was _the_ place to live! Just recently being constructed, finished in the summer of 1985 and now looking for habitants, it was the place someone rich would want to live in. The area was great, there were parks in the estate – it was the vision of a dream come true for Marty, to live in Hilldale said that he would be freaking rich in the future. Probably a rich rock star, or something similar.

But then again, Hilldale had looked… _different _from the way he knew it, when Doc and he first landed at the place. The Hilldale sign had something with red ink scribbled over it, and it was as rundown as the sign that told him he was entering 'Hill Valley', back in Biff's world, the alternate '85. As for the rest of the estate it was not looking much better. Hilldale looked a lot more beautiful in '85. But if it got rundown sometime between those years, what was his older self still doing there? Surely he'd be smart enough to move out of some kind of trash dump, or whatever Hilldale was supposed to be.

Or did this mean that the future wasn't as right as he thought of it? That he wasn't looking forward to the life he wanted to, but instead to a crappy life and reduced to being a, a nobody who no one respected or cared for? Marty now recalled, Doc had been a bit resistant when he had asked him what was wrong about his future… did he not deny because everything was okay, but because something was wrong and the inventor just didn't want to tell it to him?

_I'm really getting a headache from this… _

Marty sighed, figuring that there was one other thing to do – go asleep. He could just remain here, thinking about what the future might bring, but that wouldn't work. It wouldn't bring up any results but headaches. Sighing, he headed off towards a good-nights rest. If Doc said it was so, they both were going to get back home alive and well. Marty just knew it. Doc wouldn't lie to him about something like that… would he?

Emmett Lathrop Brown lifted up his head from the time machine, and stared at the clock which had just chimed. It was 1.30am already… the night was passing quickly. He'd better get to bed if he wanted to have any energy left when they were going to try and get home tomorrow… this morning. He was used to long nights, but this time their future depended on it, as well as his best friend. He sighed, closed the DeLorean's gull-wing door, and stood up, staring at his invention.

He still couldn't believe Marty actually came back for him. After all those warnings he'd given him in the letter… and everything about keeping the space-time continuum intact… but still, the teenager had stubbornly insisted to his '55 counterpart that he should go back in time and save Doc '85 from getting shot by Mad Dog Tannen. Emmett sighed, seeing that he now had two persons to take care of not to get shot, instead of one. This was going to be hard.

He headed over to his table, and grabbed the photograph Marty had first showed him when they got to his blacksmith shop, twelve hours ago. His name was still on it, clear and showing no signs of erasing. Surely that had been different back in 1955. Maybe it was because of the ripple effect being delayed… or simply because they hadn't made moves yet to get theirselves back home. Once they'd be on their way up to 88, the photograph would most likely transform into a blank piece of paper… or at least, his name would disappear from the photograph. Either way, he'd be fine.

Would he?

Emmett sighed once again, turning to the DeLorean. He really vowed that, once he returned home, he would destroy the time machine. Granted, it had done some good by improving the lives of Marty's parents and getting his best friend's kids out of jail, but still there were problems with the vehicle, since Biff had stolen it, and that he himself had gotten trapped in 1885. And another problem was the inability to decide what to do about the event that would most certainly happen on Sunday, October 27th, 1985.

However it had been over eight months, he still remembered the feeling of shock he had back when he'd seen the headline in Hill Valley Library 2015. Marty had, apparently, raced Needles, crashed into a Rolls Royce automobile, causing the owner of the car to press charges against him. The accident had also caused Marty's hand to be smashed, and his life to be ruined forever. The teen had been hopeless, lost in self-concern and feeling sorry for himself during many, many years. In the mid-1990s, Jennifer had, as to cheer the kid up, finally agreed to marry Marty, and have kids with him.

And, indeed, life had been going a little better for Emmett's friend from then on. In 1997 Marlene was born, the next year Marty Jr came around, and Marty had learned not to do anymore what he'd been doing for a decade – destroying all his chances on repairing his life and reaching his dream by doing just nothing, musing how things might've been if it hadn't been for the accident. Emmett could understand that Jennifer, in all her pain, would've wanted to divorce Marty shortly after 2015, if it hadn't been for the fact that the then forty-seven-year-old was so helpless and worried about their kids…

Future Emmett himself hadn't helped Marty either, something that concerned Emmett really much. According to what '15 Marty had told him, the future inventor had, after October 27, not gone back in time, however the teenager had pleaded him desperately to do so. Future Emmett had told Marty that he should go on with his life, since even without the guitar hand he could reach something, and that he should just control his temper, instead of taking the time machine back any time something like this happened.

In the days, later weeks after the accident, Emmett and Marty parted. They didn't go around to each other's houses anymore, being slightly mad on each other for not listening to what the other said to them. The weeks slowly became months, and still the two time travellers didn't talk to each other.

Then, one day, on the very late evening of February 27th, 1986, Einstein had caught Marty sneaking in, in order to steal the time machine and go back to October 27th… at 6am, so that there was enough time to warn his younger self at the lake from what was about to happen, and that he absolutely should turn down Needles' offer. Quite naturally, Emmett had been furious at the teenager, telling him how much the space-time continuum should remain intact and all that, and that it wouldn't help a thing to repair the outcome of the incident, since Marty's temper lied at the base of the whole thing.

Marty, on his turn, had also told the inventor exactly what he thought about the whole things, calling him names, and finally leaving the garage at midnight, still furious at Emmett about the whole thing. The next day, Emmett's future self had started dismantling the time machine, just like he now planned to do, once they returned home.

Apparently, Future Emmett and Marty eventually had patched up over the years, and became friends again in the late nineties. Emmett had come close to young Marty Jr, only at that time, he'd already been sick. Having seen his friend wear off and finally die in 2003, Marty sank in an even deeper hole of depression as he'd already had, allowing his life to remain the hell it was. George and Lorraine had helped them by buying a house in Hilldale and some furniture for it, as Marty had still been living at a small house that had once been from Jennifer's parents. But there had been no 'thank you' from Marty, who at the time had still been too depressed to even notice that they had changed from a small house to a bigger one, instead focusing on doing nothing.

In 2009, Jennifer had finally encouraged Marty enough to get a job again, this time at CusCo, a new Japanese company. Unfortunately, Needles had worked there too, and had become Marty's supervisor. There, Marty had worked six long years without any promotion or future (however he had been telling his parents the great promotion was just around the corner by 2015, though) and finally had become fired on the night his son had gone to jail. When Doc had arrived on the twenty-sixth, Marty had become from an ambitious teenager a depressed old man with no future.

Emmett sighed. He shouldn't think about Marty's future too much… he could always do that when they returned back home, to 1985. Right now, the thing that mattered was getting them back home. He studied the diagrams he made in order to get the DeLorean pulled by horses. He had a whip in the shop, which the two of them could use… and they could easily sit on the roof as the time machine could be pulled by the horses, getting it up to a speed as large as possible.

The inventor headed off down to his refrigerator, and grabbed his whip from behind it, where it lay at the place of his valuable things, like his money and notes about what had happened that day. He then walked over to the DeLorean, lighted a candle, careful not to disturb his sleeping friend, and stared at it. Yes, it was nice indeed, and might as well work. If only he could get the DeLorean's speedometer somehow attached to it… or better yet, do it like bike-speedometers, get the wheels rotation calculated into the whip, and therefore being able to get it automatic, hopefully…

Emmett whistled, staring at the clock once again. It was 1:38 now, just a few minutes after the time Marty had, on October 26th 1985, gone back in time. All together, it was late, very late, and it was better to just get to bed now, in order for them to be healthy and not as tired the next morning. This sure did remind him of the first day Marty had spend in 1955… it had become late then, too.

Well, Emmett thought, at least they now had the time. Granted, Marty hated the Old West, but official, they had all the time they wanted. There was no lightning bolt that was going to strike a week from now, or something similar…

But Buford Tannen _was _going to shoot him on Monday.

The inventor slapped on his forehead, wondering how he could've forgotten a thing like that. After all, it was one of the most important things now. It was the whole reason Marty got back here in the first place… Mad Dog Tannen was going to shoot him in the back on Monday, September 7th. Apparently, Emmett's slightly older self had been buried on Boot Hill Cemetery, making it possible for Marty and Younger Emmett to discover it in 1955.

"_If only I could remember" _Emmett mused, thinking instead of his usual talking because he didn't want to disturb his young sleeping friend. _"Great Scott, how can this even be possible! It happened in 1955… I _should _remember this. Am I really so stupid that I forgot, or is this just a side-effect of time travel?" _He sighed, really wishing he knew the answers. If only he didn't remember _anything_… but he did. He recalled November 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th with quite some clarity, but not including one Martin McFly getting send back to the 1880s… something he would certainly remember.

"How can I have forgotten something like seeing my own tombstone…" Emmett muttered, under his breath, wondering how this all could be possible. He'd formed a small theory on it, that said the ripple effect didn't work when you were outside of your own time, meaning that, as long as he was in 1885, he wouldn't get the memories his younger self had contained in 1955, but the theory wasn't completely formed yet and was still being changed upon what happened right here in 1885. _Of course_, the inventor thought, _if I'd known in 1955 I'd get struck by lightning… well, imagine what I'd done then, willingly or not! Great Scott, I might've changed history! _Emmett started pacing around, uncertain about his new theory.

After a few minutes thinking about it, the scientist finally came to the conclusion that there was, simply said, no conclusion. Or at least, not until they had safely returned to 1985, and destroyed the time machine. _I must say, I'm quite interested in that 'ripple effect', _Emmett thought. _It certainly is fascinating how memories can ripple. I should have a talk with Marty tomorrow… didn't he mention that his memories were changing, back when we were flying to his future home in 2015? That he didn't have the chicken problem in the original timeline? And when we spoke through the walkie-talkie on November 12th, and earlier in the alternate 1985, there were more memories altered to the new timeline… fascinating. _

Sighing, the inventor headed over to his work table, got out his notepad, and grabbed a pencil. _"Friday, September 4th, 1885"_ he wrote, adding _"Tuesday, July 1st, 1986" _also. _"I'm writing at 1:51am, pretty late for me around now, but I can afford it. I can barely believe what happened today… or in fact, yesterday. I was walking around town just after 1pm, enjoying the fresh air after a morning of working, and then I saw Mad Dog Tannen, chasing after someone. Anyone could understand my fear, so I quickly headed to the shop again, and grabbed my 'Terminator', in order to defend myself against any possible violence Tannen might be planning to hurt me. So I headed out again, and at that time, Tannen had chased the guy to the Courthouse structure, and had started to hang him up. _

_I then looked through the glass of my gun, and I was shocked. The hanged was none other than Marty! Luckily, I grabbed my senses together, or else my future friend might've been hanged. I quickly shot the rope, and had a talk with Mad Dog about the fact he wanted to shoot me. I reunited with Marty, then headed back to the shop with him. Up there, Marty revealed that Buford was indeed going to shoot me on Monday. I immediately planned to go back home with him, but unfortunately the car's fuel line was broken. We got the vehicle this evening from the cave Marty hid it in (and rescued it from the bear that was also in the cave) and brought it back uptown. Then, we had chicken for dinner, and discussed going back to the future. _

_I'd like to write some more only now is bedtime for me, too. I really hope to get ourselves back home to 1985 tomor…today, as this is one of Marty's biggest wishes, and I'd like to see Einstein again as well, and escape from Buford Tannen shooting me. Written down by Emmett Brown, Friday, September 2, 1885, 1:58 AM, Hill Valley Time."_ Emmett then dropped the pencil, buried the notebook in it's shield, and headed over to bed.

Lying down, he sighed one more time, thinking about all what happened today. He really did hope that Marty and he would return home. And seeing at that they had managed to channel 1.21 gigawatt into the flux capacitor in the year 1955, and had successfully managed to escape Libyan terrorists, Griff Tannen and both Biffs (1985-A and 1955), Emmett Brown was quite confident in this plan.

**Friday, September 4, 1885  
05:53 AM**

Marty McFly was running on top of Biff's Pleasure Paradise, and then looked behind him. He was certainly afraid that Biff would come up to him, and shoot him in the back. For some reason, he was also wearing some cowboy clothes… including a hat. He was on the hoverboard.

Then, suddenly, Biff jumped in front of him. Only now, Biff was wearing old west clothes, too. Marty realised that it had to be Buford 'Mad Dog' Tannen, although he wondered how Tannen could be in the alternate 1985. After all, he now realised, they'd burned the book – and both years were hundred years apart.

"You owe me three hundred and eighty bucks, Eastwood" Buford growled. "Three hundred bucks for the manure truck of Biff, and eighty dollars for the poor blacksmith job your friend did." He pulled up Jennifer, who was tied up with rope. "You better pay, or I'll shoot that girlfriend of yours, and dump the body into Clayton Ravine."

Marty gulped, stepping back and almost tripping over the window that was on top of the Paradise. "You back off" he said in the most brave manner possible, "you leave her alone. Right now." _Doc, where on earth are you! I need you… _

Tannen chuckled. "Surely you are going to force me to doing that" he grinned, smiling evilly. "Like you can. You're not even five-and-a-half feet tall…" He moved a few inches, still keeping the gun on Jennifer. "Ya know what I think? I think you're just chicken."

That word hit a nerve by Marty. However he hadn't got many things he bothered about, he really hated being called 'chicken'. He wasn't chicken. His father was a science-fiction writer, a pretty successful one too. He was happy in life, and confident. Not just a chicken.

The teenager clenched his fists, preparing himself for an eventual confrontation with Mad Dog. "Nobody," he whispered angrily under his breath, "nobody… calls me chicken." He glared Buford right in the eye, furious.

Right then, however, something came up from the back. Something shiny and silver-coloured. Before Marty had the presence to look good at it, still trying not to let Buford punch him unexpected, the vehicle had reached them. A gull-wing door opened, and smacked Buford in the neck. The outlaw started to topple, and when Marty hit him with the hoverboard – hit him _hard _– Buford Tannen was out for the count.

Marty and Jennifer both ran over to the time machine, happily. "Doc!" he called out. They ran over to the inventor, who was smiling broadly, sitting right next to a woman Marty didn't know at all. "It's so good to see you! C'mon, let's go back to the fifties and stop this from happening!"

Doc shook his head. "No" he said confidently. "_I _am going back in time, to the 1880s. I met this wonderful woman there, Clara Clayton, and I'm going to marry her and live in the late 19th Century forever. Biff can keep his stupid almanac… I won't be alive anymore by the time he can use it, anyway. Farewell, Marty." He closed the gull-wing door and flew off. Marty watched hopeless as the triple sonic booms announced the time machine's arrival in another time, a hundred years out of range.

"No" Marty whispered, sinking down on the roof of the building now vastly settled into reality, Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise, looking down to the fire trails in the sky, which were fading out rapidly. "This can't be happening… this can't be true…" He then felt a strange feeling in his chest, and he fell asleep.

"There, there now" a female voice then said. "You've been asleep for almost ten hours and four minutes now… just relax." Marty turned to her, wondering where he was. "I had a terrible nightmare… dreamed Biff had altered time… Doc left me…" He sighed. "It was terrible."

"Well, you're safe and sound now," the female said, gently, "back on Saturday, December 31st, 1955."

"Nineteen-fifty-five?" Marty screamed, waking up. "Argh!" He now saw the woman was in fact his mother, Lorraine, back at age seventeen. "Mom?" he asked in disbelief. "Mom? Is that you?" He could hardly believe it.

"Of course not, silly" Lorraine said, giggling. "I was once your mom, all right… but now I'm no longer. Don't you remember? We were engaged last Monday…" She stared into the air, fascinated by her future son. "It was so romantic. You called me one in a billion."

"I did?" Marty said, gulping again. This was bad.

"Yeah" Lorraine nodded. "It was so nice of you to tell me about the time machine. I'd love to see the 1980s. I can't wait to see the kids we'll have together, Marty, when they'll actually be born. The future is looking so bright for the two of us… I can't believe that, in the timeline you came from, I was actually married to George McFly. That was so horrible… I'm lucky to be engaged to someone as cute as you, Marty."

"Engaged… how can we be engaged!" Marty gasped. "You're my future mother! You just told me I told you about the time machine… but isn't it out of plutonium? And you're supposed to marry George…"

"Don't you remember, Marty?" Lorraine said, gently touching the teenager's forehead. "You told me on November 12th. You told me that you might be my future son in the original timeline, but that you loved me so much that you were willing to put your existence at stake for my happiness. That was so touching…" She smiled. "And as for the plutonium, you brought the case with you… remember? You arrived on November 5th with the whole case. And also, you travelled to the year 2015 on that same evening as the lightning storm, together with me. We hover-converted the time machine, did a Mr. Fusion-thing on it… then we headed to 1985, and saw our future children, Marty Jr, Lorraine Jr, little Dave and even smaller Marlene… it was so cute…" She moved even closer to Marty. "I really do love you, Marty."

With that, Lorraine reached down, and kissed Marty right on the mouth. The teenager tried to protest, but his mother was holding him. _Oh no, Doc, please help me! This has got to be a nightmare! _

"NOOO!!"

Marty shook his head around a few times, and then realised where he was – on an ordinary bed, Doc's 1880s bed. It had been a nightmare after all… he wasn't in 1985A or in 1955, he was in 1885. There was no Biff, no almanac, no '55 Lorraine who wanted to marry him. He was safe.

Well, he would be safe when he and Doc had safely returned to 1985. Then, finally, they would be able to relax and calm down. Everything would be fine, then. There wouldn't be anymore persons who wanted to shoot or hang either of them, the time machine would be destroyed, and life would retain it's normal course.

The seventeen-year-old whistled, then finally opened his still closed eyes, and looked around, still exhausted from the dream. He was lying on a bed, as always lying in the most awkward position one could ever imagine, and breathing heavily because of the evil dream he'd just had. From what he could see, it was still night, however little light came inside from the stars.

Breathing steadier now, Marty looked for some more things that he could see, rising up. The bed seemed to stand in the same position as it had the evening before, so nothing had happened in the hours the teenager had been out. Doc was nowhere to be seen, not in his shop working on the DeLorean, and from Marty's view it also wasn't visible if Doc was in the bed, or not.

"Wonder where he is" Marty mumbled, looking around still dazed. "Knowing him, he'll--"

And that was all the kid brought out, because right at that moment, the clocks all chimed. Chimed _loud. _Marty quickly covered his ears, but because of the loudness he was still able to hear the clocks chime. _"One… two…" _Marty thought, mentally counting the times the clock made noise. _"Three… four…" _ He stared around, looking for some better covering… this was still way too loud. _"And I thought rock and roll made noise" _Marty thought to himself, continuing to count. _"five… six…" _

After the sixth loud chime, the noise died down. Marty moved his hands away from his ears, and sighed. This was heavy. At least it was over, now… he was wide awaken, and had learned that it was 6 'o clock… most likely 6am, or else it wouldn't have been dark outside.

Figuring he wouldn't sleep anymore because of the nightmare, Marty rose up fully, and stepped away from the bed. Putting his western shoes on, he started walking around the shop. Where could Doc be…

"Marty?"

The teenager turned around to see his friend standing there, fully dressed, staring at him with a dumb-founded expression. "Marty? What are you doing, up at 6am? I know I told you to be up early, but not that early… right?" He tried to recollect the things that had all happened the evening before. "How do you feel, now?"

"Fine, Doc" Marty told the scientist, yawning, "just a little tired. I did have one hell of a nightmare last night, though… that's why I'm up so early." Changing the subject, he asked: "Say, why are _you _up right now, by the way? As you said, it's only 6am…"

Doc shrugged it off. "Couldn't sleep" he simply said. "And as for the rather obvious question you are certainly going to ask me, yes, I did sleep a few hours. I went to bed at almost two, and I woke up at a few minutes past five again, so I did sleep three hours." As he saw Marty's concerned face, he quickly added: "Don't worry, I'll be fine. I did sleep less sometimes back in 1985… or that day in twenty-fifteen…"

He smiled, thinking it over. "See, I woke up at 5.30pm, and got send back to 1985 at around 7 that same day. I had a nap from about twenty-five minutes, but I don't think I really slept… I just relaxed. So, when we left 2015, I'd been awake for about nine and a half hours, counting half an hour to pick Einie up. Then there was the alternate '85, where we were for five hours and forty-two minutes, and then we spent a day in '55. I say by the time I got hit by lightning, I'd been awake for over twenty-nine hours and ten minutes. And then I was awake for almost two hours in 1885, worrying about your situation, which adds it up to thirty-one hours of being awake."

"Heavy" Marty breathed. He could barely believe it, however he knew he had spent lots of time awake on that trip, too. Sighing, he stared across the room. "So, what did you do? Did you make any progress with plans to get the DeLorean up to 88?"

"Unfortunately, no" Doc admitted. "I've thought real hard for a few hours, and made some notes, but I don't have really more plans than the one you thought up yesterday, and any other kind of liquor we could throw into the car. Say, Chester's shop opens at 8am approximately, so around that time we could start trying that possibility. For now, how about we have breakfast, and we can head out around 7.15 to try your idea – to get the time vehicle being pulled by horses, and then up to eighty-eight."

"Yeah, right" Marty said, still looking around. "So… it's six am now?" He yawned. "I'm sorry, but I tend to forget the time… what day is it, anyway? I thought September second was a Wednesday… or at least, you thought so. The you from 1955, I mean."

"It was" Doc confirmed. "Wednesday it was… today's Friday. Friday September 4th, 1885. Don't you remember? Yesterday evening, we saw that banner hanging above? The 5th is on Saturday, tomorrow. The town festival." Changing subject, he added: "By the way, it's six-o-seven already."

"Right" Marty muttered, under his breath, staring at the inventor. "So, we're going to have breakfast now?" He was still tired, and not really up to it, but if they had to… "All right… just gimme a minute to relax."

"Okay" Doc nodded, as Marty sat down on his bed again, relaxing and thinking about everything that had happened in the past few days… weeks. It certainly had been a lot.

After a short accidental sleep and Doc waking Marty up, they'd eaten breakfast… this time no rattlesnake, but just some leftovers from Marty's pancake meal the day before, which wasn't really finished by the teenager. After the meal, Marty had listened to Doc ramble on about the methods to travel through time in the DeLorean. As it came closer to 7, the sun finally rose, and Marty and Doc headed out of the shop, spanned the horses in front of the DeLorean, and drove out of the shop with the cover still on the vehicle, surprising many people up early. Once they were out of town, Doc took the cover off, and they started to race through the desert-like surroundings of Hill Valley. Marty was sitting on top of the car with the whip Doc had finally managed to connect, and Doc next to him, pulling on the reins of the horses. "Ya! Ya! Ya!" he called out. "Ya!"

Marty looked at the whip. "24!" he screamed, through the loud noises the hoof-beats made. It wasn't that much, but at least it was faster than what they'd done yesterday.

Doc continued to pull on the reins. "It's no use, Marty!" he shouted over the noises. "Even the fastest horse in the world can't run more than 35 or 40 miles an hour." He turned back to the horses again. "Ya! Ya! Ya!"

"Are we trapped here, then?" Marty shouted back over the noises. "Struck in the 1880s? This is a boring era, Doc! And, Buford Tannen is going to shoot you on Monday!"

"Call that boring?" Doc sarcastically chuckled. He looked at the whip Marty was holding. "Still 24?"

"23 and dropping, now" Marty said, confirming Doc's guesses of the horses not being able to run faster. "They're exhausted Doc. This ain't going to work. You were right yesterday about horses not being able to just pull a car like that." He sighed, as Doc pulled the DeLorean to a halt. "So, what'll we do?"

Instead of responding, Doc lifted up the gull-wing door and headed inside, to check the time circuits. "7:36am" he muttered, to himself. "Seeing it might take us half an hour to tow the time machine back into the shop, I think that should do it, and than we can start on Plan Two." He covered the machine again, and they drove it back into the town's square.

As they arrived in town again, Marty headed towards the saloon. He was still nervous about entering it, in case Buford Tannen might decide to show up again and hang him, but luckily no one was inside when the Palace Saloon opened, except for the old men from the day before.

"Howdy, Mr. Eastwood" Chester said. "What can I do for you today? Whisky?"

'Clint' shook his head. "Nah…" he replied, trying to sound as less pressing as possible. "Doc-Emmett is trying an experiment with some kind of new type of wagon at the shop. He needs some strong liquor for it." Hoping he hadn't given away too much, Marty looked at Chester.

The bartender smiled. "An experiment? Typical Emmett. Been since that ever since the day he stepped into Hill Valley on New Year's." He headed towards the back, and came back a few minutes later with a large bottle. "It's the strongest stuff we got… I think your friend will be able to use it just fine." He set it on the table. "That'll be… 1.20 dollars." Marty handed him the money, took the bottle, and headed off towards the shop again.

Inside, he handed it over to Doc, who was just doing a few last preparations to the DeLorean. "All right, it's 8:20" the inventor said, "let's try it, Marty." He took the bottle and poured it into the DeLorean, while Marty went down to sit in front of the car to start the motor if the engine caught on.

"Bartender says it's the strongest stuff they've got" Marty told Doc, while the inventor was pouring the liquid inside.

"Try it, Marty" Doc said, confidently.

Marty pulled on the engine, but the back of the car was stalling. There was also a strange noise coming from it, and the car's engine didn't turn on. "Need more gas…" Doc muttered to his friend.

As Marty did so, however, there was a loud blow from the back of the car. Doc jumped backwards, as he saw that the entire fuel injection manifold blew off the car. "Damn!" he shouted out, disturbed. "It blew the fuel injection manifold. Strong stuff all right." He stared at the car, and at the manifold. "It'll take me a month to rebuild it."

"A month?" Marty cried out, obviously horrified by the prospect of spending so much time in 1885. "Doc, you're gonna get shot on Monday!"

Doc nodded, sighing, and moved to the window, thinking hard. "I know, I know, I know!" he exclaimed. "I wish..." He then realised something. "Wait, I've got it! We can roll it down a steep hill... no, we'd never find a smooth enough surface." He thought again. "Unless... of course... ice! We can wait until winter when the lake freezes over..."

"Winter!" Marty cut him off. "Doc! Monday! It's three days away!" He sighed deep.

Doc nodded. "Wait, let's just think this thing through logically." He glanced at the DeLorean again, not moving away from the window. . "We know it can't run on its own power, and we know we can't pull it. But, if we can figure out a way to push it up to 88 miles per hour..." He then heard something outside… a whistle. "Huh?" he asked, looking through the window, just in time to see a large steam train entering the Hill Valley station.

Marty and Doc stared at each other, as the inventor's expression brightened. "That's it!" Doc called out, enthusiastically.

"You mean, that's the way we can get home?" Marty asked. Doc nodded, and took out some paper. "Yes, yes. Now. A train… it should be able to pull a vehicle similar to the DeLorean up to 88 easily. I'm sure it can do just that… if we can have a long enough road underneath us. There should be some track outside the city to pull the DeLorean up to the necessary speed that should be achieved in order for temporal displacement…" He stared at his notes with a large intensity.

"Well, you're the Doc, Doc" Marty nodded, not really understanding what the inventor was saying. "So, how can we get ourselves a train? I mean, you can't just go to the station and get ourselves a train. They must be pretty expensive… even to borrow."

"I know, I know" Doc nodded. "We should be able to get one somehow, though. I am not going to be responsible for you being trapped in 1885 for the rest of your life."

"Don't forget yours, Doc" Marty corrected him. "Remember, you're going back with me… right? We're going to get ourselves back to 1985 together? I can't just go on with my life in 1985 knowing you're trapped in the Old West."

"Why, thank you Marty" Doc said, touched. "That's very nice of you. And, yes, I guess there's nothing really in the Old West that I'm leaving behind, if I go back to the future with you, except for Socrates. He's my dog." The inventor pointed to a small 1880s dog who was sitting on a chair in the blacksmith shop.

Marty chuckled. "Socrates, huh?" He walked over to the dog, and moved his hand through the animal's hair. "I coulda expected a name like that. He's a lot like Copernicus, I think. Y'know, the dog you had back in '55. He was with the two of us, when we dug up the DeLorean from the Delgado Mine."

"I sure wish I remembered that" Doc said, staring into the air. "The thought you spent some time with me and I don't recall it at all… well, I guess that's the way the ripple effect works. It's kind of sad, but still, it's fascinating. I can imagine how my younger self felt. Why, of course – he's me. Just having sent you home, then you showing up again with a letter from my future self about me being trapped in the past… if that's no reason to faint, I wouldn't know what else could be."

"Actually, I didn't tell you about the letter until the next morning," Marty nodded, "but I get what you're saying. I guess I can understand it, too. I might have fainted as well, being in a situation like that."

"Right" Doc nodded. "Now," he added, getting an idea, "why don't we head up to the station, and see if there's a way we can find out about the speed we can get up to while time travelling?" He looked around. "According to the clock, it's eight-thirty-two. Still early on the day, but if you want to get home fast…"

"Let's go" Marty interrupted, already stepping out of the shop. Doc grinned at his friend's hurry, then headed out himself. The two future time travellers quickly were on their way to the station. It was about nine minutes walking, and it took some time for them to see the engineer, who was still inside. Finally, the man came out, and Doc could ask the question they all wanted to hear the answer to. "How fast can your train ride?" he asked, trying to sound as inconspicuous as possible. "I mean, what speed is the fastest she can reach?"

The engineer laughed, and pondered the question. "How fast she can go?" he said. "Why, I've powered her up to 55 myself. I hear that fearless Frank Fargo got one of these up to near 70 out past Verde Junction."

Marty couldn't wait any longer for the answer to his question. "Is it possible to get it up to 90?" he asked. The engineer laughed again. "Ninety? Tarnations, son, why'd ya ever be in such a hurry?"

Doc realised they had to think up a reason fast. Silently disapproving Marty had asked _the_ question so conspicuous, he answered the engineer before Marty could give another answer that would made the man frown at them. "Well, it's just a little bet that he and I have, that's all." Realising they really needed the answer, though, he added: "Theoretically speaking, could it be done?"

"Well," the engineer said, "I suppose if you had a straight stretch of track with a long level grade, and you weren't hauling no cars behind you - and if you could get the fire hot enough, I mean hotter than the blazes of hell and tarnations –" He nodded. "Well yes, you might be able get her up that fast."

Doc smiled, happy to have his guesses confirmed. Now there was only one thing they further needed to know. "When does the next train leave the station?" he asked.

"Monday morning at 8 o'clock" the engineer replied. "Why do you want to know? I mean, it isn't necessary for your bet to know when the next train leaves… is it?"

Doc gulped uneasily. "Well, no," he said, "but we just wanted to know." He motioned to Marty. "C'mon, Mar-Clint, we should really go now. Thanks for the information." They headed off, leaving the engineer confused.

"So, what'll we do now?" Marty asked when they were out of sight. "Are we just going to wait around for Monday the seventh to arrive? It's the same day, Doc. Buford is going to shoot you on the same day. What if that shooting was on, say, 7am? What if he shot you still asleep in your bed, right at your home?" He shivered at the thought of waking up, ready to catch the train, and find out his friend was dead. The whole reason of his return would've been faded away in that case.

"Well, I suppose that Tannen wouldn't wake up that early" Doc said. "Also, didn't the tombstone say that I was shot in the back? I certainly will be awake when it happens, unless he pulled me up from my bed, and shot me half-awake."

"Yeah, I guess you're right" Marty nodded. "I can't help but worry about him wanting to shoot you. Are you sure you'll be safe, Doc?"

"It's around nine, now" Doc said. "Means that there are only seventy-one hours left before we leave this time period and go back to the future to destroy that infernal time machine." He gritted his teeth. "So, if I survived living in this time period for hundreds… no, almost six thousand hours… I should be able to survive these seventy-one without a glitch, right?"

"Yeah, right" Marty nodded, still not feeling all too well. "You're right, Doc. I guess you will be fine, then… but I can't help but worry about your fate."

"I'll be okay" Doc assured him. "Let's walk on… the less people see us, the less we'll have an effect on future events. Granted, my actions in the year 1885 seemed to have no effort on the world as it was back in the Fifties… you said everything looked the same?"

"Except for the tombstone at Boot Hill Cemetery, the DeLorean in the mine, Western Union wondering about a mysterious letter-sender and receiver for seventy years long and you being mentioned in the history books of Hill Valley – nope" Marty confirmed. "I think that you have indeed been careful, at least, that's what I guessed. It's not like I saw the whole world change into an Orwellian empire when you got struck by lightning." He shivered, as he remembered the experience. Warning his friend about the bolt that was coming… then watching helpless as lightning surrounded the car… desperately trying to get some noise out of the walkie-talkie, to know his best friend and fellow time traveller was at least still alive… then the Western Union, a sigh of relief at the fact Doc lived… and after scaring Doc '55 into a faint, realising that his friend might still be living, he _was_ in the Old West, and Marty was going to need to go through a few more adventures in order to get all of them alive and well back to 1985.

Doc smiled, and they continued to head towards the blacksmith shop. After a few minutes, they finally reached the place, and went inside. It was 9:10am, and Doc yawned. "I think I'm going to take a nap, first" he muttered. "Then we'll continue our plans in, say, about half an hour."

"Well, that's fine" Marty said. He changed for his new 1880s pyjamas that Doc had given him the day before, and then went towards his bed, about to go take a nap himself – hey, if Doc could, why couldn't he – when there was a loud knocking on the door, three times in a row. "Mr. Brown? Mr. Eastwood?" the knocker called out. "Are you two in there?"

Marty thought the voice and the accent sounded familiar, but Doc recognised it to the fullest, having lived eight months in the same town. "It's Seamus!" he called out, getting off the bed he was just preparing to lie down on. "Quick, cover the DeLorean!"

"Check, Doc!" Marty called out, as they quickly grabbed the tarp and covered the time machine, in his hurry leaving his new hat at the bed. As it was completely covered, Doc opened the door, seeing that it was indeed Seamus McFly. "Why, come in" he said, nervously. "What is it you visited us for?"

"Oh, I just wanted to see if Clint had reached you" Seamus said, smiling. "He seemed very insistent to see you on Wednesday… Maggie and he even had a fight about letting him go that same evening to warn you about the shootin'." He turned to look at Doc, instead of looking all through the barn. "If I remember well, yer friend had heard ya are going to be shot on Monday by Tannen, is that right?"

"Yes, that's right" Doc replied, nervous. "Mar-Clint had heard about it, uh, from somebody who was robbed by Tannen's gang, and was visiting the town of San Fransisco… that's where Clint lives. So once he heard that… that was Tuesday, I believe," he added since the day Marty had heard about where Doc was had been in some way Tuesday the First too, since that was the day he'd send the boy the letter, "… Clint insisted to come here, warn me and save me. Only our train won't leave until Monday, though."

"Why don't ya go on horse, then?" Seamus wondered. "It'll take a lot longer, aye, but surely ya will be able to reach San Fransisco around the time Mad Dog will be wanting to shoot you. And even Tannen doesn't go that far to chase someone he wants dead." He sighed. "And I know Buford Tannen. The man always comes into the Palace Saloon, ordering me not to come in there. He seems to have some sort of grudge against me, I believe. I wonder why, though… as far as I know, I never did anything bad against him."

"I know" Marty nodded. "Back when I arrived in town yesterday morning, Buford mistook me for you for a few moments, thanks to the hat I was wearing. He told me, thinking it was you, that you should never come in there again."

"He always does that" Seamus nodded. "For as long as I know him. He sure is an evil outlaw. I was always sure not to angry him too much, though – since Buford Tannen is the fastest gun in the West. I'm not a coward, but I don't want Tannen to kill me. Especially with leaving Maggie a widow, and now having little Will to care for…"

"He's a nice boy" Marty commented, hearing the mention of young William. "You do have to remember not to give him to visitors too soon, though – even if he likes them, he might as well pee on them."

"I won't" Seamus promised, guessing what Marty meant. "Well, I should go now, I believe you were going to take a nap. Sleep well, Emmett. Sleep well, Clint."

"Thanks" Doc nodded, as Seamus let himself out of the shop. As Marty's ancestor then had left, he breathed a sigh of relief. "Great Scott!" he whispered. "I was quite shocked when your ancestor just showed up like that, Marty. Imagine the risk if Seamus could've found out about the time machine! The consequences of that could be disastrous."

"What do you mean, Doc?" Marty said, confused. "Seamus may not be perfect, but he's not like Biff, or at least, that's what I think he isn't, after having talked with him Wednesday. He seems like a nice guy to me, so it's not like he'll go on a joyride through time, or goes to the future to find out information and use it the bad way, like Biff did."

"I know, Marty" Doc nodded. "But we can't be too careful. We have together tried to handle the time machine responsibly… I won't talk about the almanac-incident now… and see where we ended up. Jennifer being taken to her future home with risk on a paradox, lightning striking the DeLorean… imagine the risk if Seamus would take the time machine and end up giving information about the future to a Tannen, even accidentally, or get trapped in the past or future, with no one to help him out to repair the time vehicle? No, Marty, or best bet is to patch up this thing as good as possible, go back to the future on Monday, and destroy the infernal machine!"

"Yeah, I suppose" Marty nodded. "Well, let's go on the nap you suggested, then. I think it wouldn't hurt by any of us to have half an hour sleep, now. We've been awake for quite a long time. We can afford to sleep thirty minutes."

Marty's 'thirty minutes' became forty-five, due to neither of them thinking to set an alarm clock to wake them up again, and it was almost 10am when they arrived at the Hill Valley station, on their respective horses. Doc settled the horses, and headed up to a board with a map on it. He looked at it intently, not noticing someone pulling something out of the train that was still standing in the station – nothing else than the clock tower's clock! He looked at the map, then turned to his friend.

"Here" he muttered, pointing to the map and a spur that was signed with red on it, running off the main spur. "This spur runs off the main line 3 miles down to Clayton Ravine. There's a long stretch of track that will still exist in 1985. This is where we'll push the DeLorean with the locomotive." He chuckled, pointing at the map. "Funny, this map calls Clayton Ravine Shonash Ravine. Must be an old Indian name for it." Pausing, he added: "It's perfect. Nice long run that goes clear across the bridge over the ravine, you know, over near that Hilldale housing development."

Marty nodded, then looked closer at the map to see the ravine was indeed on the map. Only there was something he missed. The bridge Doc just described, the Clayton Ravine Bridge both of them had travelled often, _wasn't there. _"Right, Doc" he said, unconfidently, "but according to this map… there is no bridge."

Doc frowned and looked closer. "You're right. There seems to be no bridge indeed. Of course, that can come from poorly signing. Maybe there was no bridge at the time this map was made, but there is now…"

"You don't know?" Marty interrupted.

"I guess not" Doc admitted. "I never travelled to the ravine in 1885… the Hilldale apartments won't get built in another ninety-nine years, and not be finished in a hundred-and-two, so there's no one to get a blacksmith job delivered to. So I simply never came there for my job. I never thought of Clayton Ravine in the time I was in 1885." He paused. "Well, I suppose that if you really want to be certain, we can always check it out. It's five miles away from here… it'll be about a quarter to twenty minutes, if we get the horses to run on that steady speed.

"Okay, let's go, then" Marty nodded. Doc smiled, and the two of them headed towards the horses parked next to the station. They got on them, and rode off to the large Ravine. Since both of them knew the place well, they expected to get there in twenty minutes… but it became thirty, actually, thanks due changes in the field neither Doc or Marty knew, being used to the terrain in 1985. At around 10:35, both time travellers finally arrived at Clayton… Shonash Ravine.

Looking around, Marty saw he'd been right. The tracks went over in a 'bridge' pulled up by wooden beams from about fifteen feet long, then stopped in a dead end. As Marty looked over to a sign next to the ravine, he saw it read: 'Shonash Ravine Bridge: Completed Summer 1887'.

The teenager sighed. "Summer 1887?" He turned to Doc. "Well, Doc, we can scratch that idea. I mean, we can't wait around a year and a half for this thing to get finished."

Doc, who'd been thinking the whole business over on their ride to the ravine, shook his head. "Marty...it's perfect!" he exclaimed, apparently unable to understand how his friend could scratch a wonderful idea like this one. "You're just not thinking fourth dimensionally!"

Marty nodded. "Right, right" he muttered. "I have a real problem with that."

Doc smiled, explaining the answer to his friend. "Don't you see?" he exclaimed. "The bridge will exist in 1985. It's safe and still in use." He paused. "Therefore, as long as we get the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour before we hit the edge of the ravine, we'll instantaneously arrive at a point in time where the bridge is completed. We'll have track under us, and coast safely across the ravine!"

Marty looked at the end of the track, and realised there was one thing Doc had apparently overlooked in his plans. _The DeLorean will be going to the future all right, but the train… _ "What about the locomotive?" he asked, uncertainly. Doc grinned. "It'll be a spectacular wreck" he told his friend. "Too bad no one will be around to see it." Marty smiled.

Right at that moment, a loud scream was heard in a distance. A voice that was obviously female called: "Argh! Help me!" Doc and Marty looked at the direction of the sound to see a woman on a buckboard, riding in a distance. Obviously, the horses were out of control. Doc gulped, as he realised where the horses were heading to… Shonash Ravine. "Great Scott!" he called out._ She's going to die in that ravine if we don't do anything! Screw the continuum… we've got a mission to accomplish! _He turned to their horses. "Git!" he called out.

"Hiyah!" Marty chimed in, as they both started to head out to the woman who was calling for help. Trying to move as fast as possible, the two of them started to catch up with her… or better, the horses. _"Do we have to end up in an adventure _every_ time we go time travelling?" _Doc thought, yelling out to the horses. _"I really should destroy the machine." _

As he caught up to the woman, Doc saw the horses were only a few dozen feet away from the ravine, now. Realising that it was now or nothing, he turned to the woman. He couldn't see her face because it was covered by her hat, but nevertheless shouted to her. "Jump!" he screamed, afraid the woman might die.

The woman just managed to jump off the buckboard as it broke off the horses, who stopped dead short as the ravine came closer. Te wagon, however, on which the woman would've been on if it hadn't been for Doc, continued to roll and fell down into the ravine. There was a loud crash as it exploded.

"Whoa" Doc told his horse, exhausted from the quick run. This was, like Marty would've said, heavy. They just saved a woman from falling into Shonash Ravine… they saved her life. He hoped this wouldn't have any bad repercussions on the space-time continuum.

The woman, coming to rest, turned to Doc. "Oh, thank you sir, you saved my…" she muttered, gently, then pushed up her hat to uncover her face. "Life."

Doc stared at her in amazement. This woman was more beautiful than any person he'd ever seen. Her eyes were beautiful, her face was, her hair looked wonderful… He stared at her in disbelief. "Emmett Brown at your service, Miss.." he said, wondering what her name was.

"Um… um…" Clara said, silently, "Clayton." Pausing, she added: "Clara Clayton."

"Clara" Doc muttered in disbelief at how beautiful she was, and how the name fit like a tee with that beauty. He couldn't help but want to tell her that. "What a beautiful name" he silently whispered, not realising that Clayton was the name of the woman that had fallen into the ravine in his timeline, as well as the name of the person he was supposed to pick up, and Clara was the name of the person who'd erected his tombstone. He'd not picked her up, but apparently destiny didn't care, and had cruelly interrupted the continuum's wish to continue to exist by bringing them together again, resulting in a thing no one would ever have thought of as being true.

Emmett Lathrop Brown had fallen in love… love at first sight.


End file.
